Intervention
by carinims01
Summary: Steve is being less than kind to Tony, again, and Bruce thinks be knows why. Avengers AU; missing scene. No slash.


Disclaimer: I don't own the Avengers.

So, this story could also be called "Why Steve acted like by-the-book jerk to Tony, who looked hurt when Cap brushed him off, and what Bruce did to fix it." Obviously, this title is too long, so I went with Intervention instead. ;) Basically, this is my coping method for having to wait another year for Avengers 2, and then another year for Captain America 3.

For the longest time, I didn't understand why Steve was being to sullen and un-Steve in the Avengers, (probably doesn't help that I only recently got into Avengers fanfiction), and then it hit me: time-limes. Then the headcanon started to build and grow and explode when I was trying to sleep. In addition to being a coping method, this is also my person explanation to the un-Steve-ness during the movie. It's also an experiment to see if I like writing Avengers-verse fics, and if I will continue to do so in the future. ;) Last but not least, after Tony's line about keeping Cap on ice, it all goes AU. Just a note.

Enjoy:

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><p><strong>Intervention<strong>

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><p>The tension could practically be felt in the air. The suffocating feeling, the heat, the glares that could kill the God of Mischief himself. Really, it was the last place Bruce should be, but there he was, scanning Loki's magical (scientific) scepter. As far as Bruce had seen, Steve was proving to be a little sullen and by-the-book, and Tony... Well, since Bruce had made his acquaintance, he had been living up to reputation: snarky and sarcastic. Unfortunately, that was only adding to the hostile atmosphere.<p>

"We have orders," Rogers stated flatly. "We should follow them."

Tony reached into the silvery bag in his hand, pulling out a handful of dehydrated blueberries. Casually, he threw them into his mouth, keeping his eyes on the Captain. "Following's not really my style."

Cap paused, sighing, and Banner could practically see the annoyance burning in his eyes as his jaw tightened. "And you're all about style, aren't you?"

"Of the people in this room, which one is a) wearing a spangly outfit and b) not of use?" the billionaire snapped back, raising his eyebrow.

"Steve," Bruce interrupted calmly, drawing his attention, "tell me none of this smells a little funky to you."

The tone of his voice, and really, the reminder of his presence at all, was enough to diffuse the argument. Cap's gaze flickered to the engineer momentarily before his eyes focused on the door. "Just find the cube," he muttered, walking away.

Bruce watched him go, listening to the subtle _swoosh_ of the automatic door. When he looked at Tony, he thought he saw disappointment filling the man's dark eyes. He hadn't read everything about Iron Man or his background, but he knew enough to realize that growing up, Tony had probably heard a lot about Captain America through his father, who had a hand in creating the superhuman hero. Maybe little Tony had taken to idolizing the Captain? Only now, faced with Steve Rogers instead of Captain America, he was finding it hard to align the two.

"That's the guy my dad never shut up about?" Tony asked bitterly. Bruce made his way over to the computers, adjusting the levels while the other genius in the room tinkered with another computer. "Wondering if they should've kept him on ice."

The scientist raised the levels on the computer, slowly compensating for the amount of interference the helicarrier itself was giving off. "You do understand why he's being like this, don't you?"

Behind him, Bruce heard Tony spin around, sauntering towards him. "Why Capsicle is being a jerk and a half?" he asked. "No, frankly, I don't. You'd think he'd be a little more considerate. After all, I'm the son of an old friend, right?"

Banner bit his lower lip and turned slightly. "Well, I think that's part of the problem." He took a few steps to his right, leaning against the white counter as Tony paused, locking his eyes on the fellow scientist. Taking off his glasses, the scientist let them hang from the tips of his fingers. "You read the file on him, right?"

Tony cocked his head curiously. "Yeah, so?"

"The guys been in the ice for nearly seventy years; you're the only link he has to his past," Bruce explained. "And it's a fragile link at that."

"So I should just let it all go?" he asked.

Sighing, Bruce looked down at his glasses, narrowing his eyes when they reflected the overhead lighting. "I'm not saying that, I'm just trying to explain why he's being this way. I mean, at least why I think... I'm not a psychiatrist, by any means, but I can understand a little of what he's going through."

"Oh?"

The defensive, edgy tone of Stark's voice only proved that this wasn't going well. Instead, Banner decided to change tactics. "Explain to me what happened when Steve took down the Valkyrie over the Arctic."

To his credit, Tony resisted the urge to roll his eyes, looking like a patronized child. "A summary? Dad said that Cap forcefully boarded the plane, did a little one on one time with Red Skull while flying through the air. In the end, Steve defeated Red Head but had to take the plane down before the autopilot took complete control and crashed them, and her nuclear explosives, into New York."

"Right," Bruce praised. "And since then, he's been dead to the world, completely unaware of everything happening around him."

The billionaire sighed, folding his arms over his _Black Sabbath_ tee and blocking out the subtle glow of the arc reactor. "Yes? Alright, so?"

_"So_, that was May 4th, _1945_," Bruce stresses, leaning forward a fraction for emphasis.(1) "He was 'dead' for nearly seventy years. Think about it, Tony. Only a day before he crashed the Valkyrie, his best friend, who he'd known his whole life, fell hundreds of feet from a speeding train. Steve_ watched_ Sergeant Barnes fall to his death after trying and failing to save him. The next day, he goes on a suicide mission to take down Hydra once and for all and ends up crashing the plane, freezing himself in the ice for seventy years. He's revived in the year 2014, where he's told that everyone he ever loved is dead and gone. His whole life has been erased and there's nothing he can do about it. Can you imagine what that must be_ like?" _

The silence in the room was strange, since Stark was usually gabbering about something or other, and the awakened look on the billionaire's face was equally odd. Bruce knew he'd known all the information that he'd just repeated, but the scientist wasn't sure he'd put all the pieces together, especially since he'd been running around for SHIELD nonstop.

Bruce twirled his glasses with the tips of his finger, shifting his feet nervously as he continued. "He was still heavily grieving his friend's death when he crashed the plane, and he's _still_ grieving now. To _us_, it's been seventy years since all of that happened, yes. But to Steve, who was only just revived, it's been... What? Not even two weeks since his best friend died. You read the file; the two of them were inseparable. He still has to come to grips with that before he can even begin to process losing everything else."

"Okay," Stark said slowly, rubbing the side of his face, "so why all the hostility towards me? I don't think that guy even ever said 'hello.' And how can you understand what he's going through?"

"Well, like I said, you're his link to his past. You're Howard Stark's son, and yes, I know you don't need reminding," he added when the engineer sneered. "But on some level, you remind him of Howard; you remind him of everything he's lost. I think that when he sees you, he sees everything he could never get back, and it hurts. So naturally, there'll be some hostility."

"Oh, yeah," Tony repeated sarcastically, _"'naturally.'" _

Banner felt a smile pull at the corner of his mouth, but the feeling stopped as he answered the second part of the question. "As for how I can understand," he continued, pushing his glasses onto the bridge of his nose as he read the computer again, "when I was working with the gamma radiation and I became... the _Other Guy_, I isolated myself. Because of what I'd become," he said sadly, "I couldn't contact any of my friends or family. The government was watching me. Hunting me. SHIELD was no doubt watching me. Other interested parties too, apparently. How could I put the people I love in danger like that?"

Dragging the bar up to adjust for radio emissions, Bruce shoved his other hand in his pocket, balling it into a fist. "I moved away. I started a new life where no one knew me. It was lonely. It hurt. But I had to do it. Of course, I _could _have contacted anyone at anytime, but I didn't." Finally, he turned back to the unsuited Iron Man, feeling every bit as vulnerable as he did when the _Other Guy _took over. "Now, if I felt like that when I knew the people I loved were still _alive _and could be called over the phone, how do you think _Steve_ feels, when all of his family and friends are dead and buried? He's grieving. I mean, can you imagine the self-hate and guilt he must feel over Barnes' accident alone?"(2)

"We've all lost people," Tony shot back, dark eyes stirring with emotion.

"Not like that," the scientist argued, shaking his head. "I think it's affecting Steve much more than any of us realize. More than he lets us see. Did you know he spends all his free time in the gym, beating the stuffing out of punching bags? Did you know he doesn't sleep at night?"

Tony furrowed his brow, shifting his weight between his feet as the anger in his eyes lessened. "Wasn't in his medical history," he frowned.

"No," he agreed, "it wasn't. I asked Natasha and Fury. They both suspect nightmares."

"Of what?"

Bruce lifted his head, his own dark eyes catching Tony's as he forced down his rising frustration. Stark really couldn't be this thick, could he? "Oh, I don't know, could it be the World War he'd been in? Watching his allies die on the front lines? Watching Barnes _fall _to his death and being unable to save him?"

The engineer cocked an eyebrow, seemingly impressed by Bruce's outburst. The fear that Banner was used so to seeing in people's eyes was absent, and instead, there was a smugness in Stark's eyes that the scientist didn't understand. "You've got to get out more, Doc. Like I said: Stark Tower. I offer a stress-free environment."

Sighing, Bruce adjusted his glasses. "Maybe when this is all over, alright? Right now, I'd just like to focus on the problem at hand. Give Steve some credit, will you? Yes, right now he's a fuse, but given time..."

"I know, I know. Cap's heroism will outshine the sun. I heard it from dad all the time growing up," Tony said, gesturing up with his hands. Banner gave him a skeptical look, a look that could have been called challenging. "Okay, fine, how's this? I'll cool it for Steve, pun intended, if you consider my offer. A genius can get lonely all by himself."

Bruce snorted and rolled his eyes, but nodded. "I'm not sure you'll want me around, really, but alright."

"Hey, cut yourself some slack, too. Alright?" Stark added. "I don't want to hear any more of this 'I'm a time bomb ready to go off' buisness, alright? Also part of the deal."

This time, Banner did allow a smile to crawl onto his lips. "Fine. Deal. Okay?"

"Okay. Good. After all, we geniuses have to stick together through this. The world needs us, and so do these emission levels," he said with new determination. Then, his smile fell. "Someone should talk to Steve."

Bruce looked up from his work. "Well, that was abrupt."

"Point. But still."

"Who?"

"You, obviously," Tony stated, very matter-of-factly. He ran a hand through his dark hair, doing some calculations on the state of the art computer screen.

Bruce looked torn between being honored and confused. "Me?"

"Well," Stark continued, glancing at the scientist, "if Steve's supposed to lead us into glorious battle, he needs to be focused on it. You and he seem to connect... Kind of, anyway. And you seem the most qualified. It can't be me, for even more obvious reasons. Natasha is too detached. Thor's too... Thor. Fury is too one-eyed, and—"

Smirking, Banner interrupted, "Okay, I get it. I'll talk to him." He glanced over at Tony, his grin widening at the gratitude in his eyes. The billionaire had been cast as an uncaring, detached playboy by the media, but Bruce hadn't really seen that. He'd seen someone who carefully hid his emotions to prevent getting hurt further. Except now, the scientist could clearly see the curious concern in his eyes for his teammate. Maybe there was more to Tony Stark than meets the eye.

Bruce looked at the computer once more, glancing at the scepter behind him. "Guy's not wrong about Loki. He does have the jump on us..."

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><p>(1) In researching, I found this date on one of the comic book forums. The site had evidently analyzed both the movie-verse and the comic-verse and created a very handy timeline.<p>

(2) *spoilers* Yes, I did see Captain America 2, and I know that Peggy is still alive, but for the sake of Bruce's explanation, I'm going to go under the assumption that SHIELD neglected to tell anyone, (including Steve), that just yet.

From that last line, it just jumps back into canon. Well, I hope you guys liked it. Special thanks to CaptainOzone for beta'ing. ;) Like I said, this was an experiment in regards to writing for the Avengers fandom, and I have to say that I quite liked it. There may be more. I'm not sure. Anyway, I really need to use the sleep, so goodnight, all. ;) Thanks for reading.


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